1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data transfer apparatus, an image capturing apparatus, and data transfer system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, video cameras, each incorporating a large-capacity hard disk drive (to be abbreviated as an HDD hereinafter), have become commercially available. In such video cameras, an internal HDD is normally used as a temporary storage medium for image (video) data. As the recording capacity of the internal HDD increases, so too does the number of image files stored in the internal HDD.
To cope with such increases in the number of files, a technique for improving content (image file) searchability by displaying content information (e.g., titles) of the respective content (image file) recorded in the internal HDD has been proposed.
On the other hand, data recorded in the internal HDD often include image data to be stored for a longer term as well as those to be backed up. Image data (image files) to be stored for a longer term and backed up are often transferred from the internal HDD to an external recording medium such as a DVD (Digital Versatile Disk) or the like. Normally, the recording capacity of the internal HDD tends to be larger than that of the external recording medium. Hence, the internal HDD tends to record image files of various content.
For this reason, image files having less relevant content are often transferred together to the external recording medium and the amount of labor required to organize files after data transfer cannot be reduced.
In order to reduce the amount of labor required to organize files after data transfer, image files having highly relevant content must be transferred together to the external recording medium. However, with the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-32582, image files tend to have different content information (e.g., titles), and the searchability of image files with highly relevant content may be impaired. Hence, the labor for a file search before data transfer cannot be reduced.
Alternatively, video data must be selected and transferred in consideration of the recordable capacity (free space) of the external recording medium as a data transfer destination, and the operation load when transferring data to the external recording medium may increase.